Xmosaic Development On A Roll

Published in Issue 10 of the Linux Gazette

Netscape binaries are more-or-less freely available for Linux, and the
program works well, most of the time. As a Linux user I've become accustomed
to a large potential for customization in software, right down to the
source-code level. Netscape is available only as a large, opaque executable
and the source is proprietary. I don't necessarily want a web-browser to fetch
email and newspostings for me; I use other programs for those purposes but
with Netscape those functions are unwanted baggage, loaded into memory every
time the browser start up.

The recent beta versions of Xmosaic (the latest is 2.7b5) have been
quicker-loading alternatives. Background colors and images are supported, but
it just isn't as quick to load images and pages as Netscape.

Scott Powers, head of the Xmosaic development team at the University of
Illinois, has for the past couple of months been leading a new Xmosaic
project. The Xmosaic developers felt that the code upon which the version 2.7
and earlier browsers had been based needed a complete rewrite. Version 2.8 is
now in public alpha testing. The project has been dubbed "Hyperion", as a sign
that something totally new is in the works.

A mailing list for Hyperion has arisen lately. Perusing the messages from
the developers one can feel the excitement in the air. These people are
really motivated, and working extremely long hours as well. Most days a
"snapshot" of that day's code level is available from their ftp site.

The first alpha releases were pretty rudimentary; there was no image
support and many HTML files couldn't be loaded. I think that the source code
was released at such an early level so that the developers could be sure that
the core parsing routines, etc., could be successfully compiled on all
targeted platforms. On September 10 the alpha version 2 was completed and
released. Image support is now functional, though at this stage you must use
specific versions of the JPEG and Xpm libraries. There's still a long way to
go before Xmosaic 2.8 is actually very usable, but that's what the alpha
tester's reports are helping to expedite.

What Can We Expect?

Scott Powers and the rest of the Hyperion team have an impressive list of
planned features. One of the most exciting is a modularization of the source
code. This means that if you wanted a speedy, basic browser the compile-time
option would be available to not include, say, Java and sound support. A user
could conceivably compile several versions, each with different capabilities.

Developers of web-browsers are faced with some difficult decisions. What
standards to follow? How many of the "Netscape-isms" are now prevalent enough
to be considered desirable? As an example, tables are now standard and to be
expected in any new browser, as are forms. Frames are another matter; they
are common on the web but many find them of limited value and they have
yet to gain widespread acceptance. Xmosaic 2.8 will be HTML-3 compliant, and
various sorts of multimedia support are being discussed. The alpha-testers
have been making numerous suggestions, and their ideas are being taken
seriously by the Xmosaic team.

Locations and Sources

If you'd like to check in from time to time and see what progress has been
made, Xmosaic 2.8 is the
home-page. The current alpha (and before too long, beta) version source code
can be downloaded from the page. The ftp site might be
faster, but at this early stage the source code is only about three hundred
kilobytes. Information concerning the mailing list is also on the home page.

I encourage anyone who has a little time and the inclination to participate
in the alpha testing. Every bug report contributes to a higher quality final
release, and I'd hate to see Xmosaic 2.8 work really well only on Sparc or
HPUX machines because not enough Linux users contributed reports!